Lower Number Not Sure Whether To Shoot

[Louellen]

I think we should - I really do. I couldn't agree with you more - making our pets sick for the sake of lining their own pockets further really is a disgrace. If they're that worried about profit margins, I'd be happier to pay a few cents extra for things like the Friskies Special Diet, or the EVO dry to have the option available to choose a better food. I know there's the argument that a lot of cats and dogs do really well their whole lives on lower quality food, and that's fine - no-one's asking them to take that choice away - but for those of us who NEED an affordable, healthy option for our special needs pets, having options removed especially when we're not given any warning about it isn't just an inconvenience. It really can make the difference between us being able to keep our pets healthy and possibly losing them years earlier than we needed to.


I think that just proves the point that vets are falling for the hard sell from companies like Hills, Purina and RC (and I firmly believe all 3 companies need stopping - vet approved, as far as I can tell, means nothing except that they've got a lot of vets to fall for their marketing). My old vet in the UK had me put my cats on Hills dry from day 1 - first the kitten food, then the adult formula. OK, those 2 aren't prescription only but they're a lot more expensive than they need to be just the same. And of course I assumed he knew best (this was 12 years ago before I had any thoughts about needing to question the vet's opinion). Then they had me switch them to RC Urinary S/O dry - that was for Rosa, but I ended up feeding it to both of them so they could eat together as they always had. My current vet wanted us to use prescription foods only for both Shadow and Rosa. We had Shadow on prescription food for a while, though we did vary it between the 3 manufacturers as she'd never eat any of the foods for more than a few weeks (and would barely pick at them even then). And the worst of it is that if we'd only known better at the time, she's getting BETTER blood work results on the Friskies Special Diet (the standard supermarket-available brands were the ONE THING I was told NEVER to feed my cats by both vets as they claimed they're no good for them). Regan's on-again, off-again over-grooming has stopped, Rosa's BG is under control and their fur looks so much healthier and shinier - all on food that I was told was poor quality and not to be fed!

I agree with you that we are falling prey to vet's poor education on nutrition, gotten only from Hills, Purina and RC but, mainly from Hills. Purina is closing in on that though as is RC. Like you, I followed vet instructions and got into the prescription kibbles (i.e.: Science Diet) and got into trouble with every one of my pets while friends who were feeding their cats supermarket foods like Fancy Feast and Friskies, 9 Lives...had pets that had few health issues. Go figure. Yet, we are schooled by our vets from Day 1 that anything other than what they sell on their shelves is "garbage" and will "kill your pet". Meanwhile, I kept paying vet bills even with this so called "good and quality tested food" and ended up with pets dying young and constant vet visits. Is that some sort of coincidence or what? Maybe, not??? Who knows? But, I can say that people who fed their pets that "garbage food" had much fewer vet bills and theirs lived much longer lives! What is that saying?

 

[Louellen]

I can assure you that the research being done by vets themselves is totally flawed. The vet dental specialist I took my civie Worf to see, asked about his diet. When I told her he ate Fancy Feast Turkey and Giblets pate, her comment was that they have been tracking diets and Fancy Feast seemed to be a common factor in dental disease in cats and to boot came in on their survey as almost the worst. When I asked if she meant specifically the pate given FF makes a lot of food I would NOT give my cats, she said they had not drilled down to actual variety. I had 2 cats that ate the FF Turkey & Giblets their whole lives, never needed any dental work and lived to 16.5 and 17 yrs old. I also have a 17 yr. now who has eaten that food his entire life along with Whiskas kibble, another dental offender per the dental specialist (Whiskas was my Mom's choice not mine) and he has never needed any dental work either. She tried to convince me that my 3 yr old cat with feral origins had dental problems because of his diet. She didn't do thorough research and I let her know it!

So is it any wonder that the vets are swayed by the marketing tactics of the big pet food companies! Their research is not being done well. Even my vet (and I thank my lucky stars for her 99.99% of the time) tried to tell me that the vet formulas are more consistent than the commercial brands. Really??? Then why does their packaging only list minimums and maximums like all the commercial stuff if their formulas are so much more precise?

My vet was quite impressed that I had found foods lower in carbs than anything she could offer (EVO and YOUNG AGAIN) and is now upset that EVO has gone and YA may soon not be available either. She has offered to go to bat with us about the new Canadian pet food import regulations bighug: to her) but most vets are brainwashed by the marketing and all they see are the $ signs with the mark up they charge on the RX foods.

Amen, MrWorfmensMom! Well said! And, back when I was a kid (I've always had pets), there wasn't this "push" towards dental cleanings etc.. Not that I'm saying that they are not needed in a lot of cases but, just that I heard from our previous vet (now almost non-practising) that they made it a "quota" as to how many dental cleanings they did per month. It's an easy billing for them and hard on our wallets. Even kibble isn't able to do much for teeth, in spite of their claims otherwise. If a cat builds plaque and tartar (like we humans do), they build it. Some build more than others and like humans, it really has more to do with the body than it does diet for the most part. A human dentist will admit that some people just automatically produce more plaque and tartar than others and yet...eat the same foods (i.e.: a couple of spouses).

I'd be willing to bet that vets get more than just a good profit margin from selling these big companies' foods. I'd be willing to bet that they also get "kick-backs" of some kind, in some way, the same way that our doctors used to (some still do) get kick-backs from big pharma co.s and their representatives. They wine and dine 'em and send them on trips "to see their manufacturing facilities". I've had one vet tell me that they sent him overseas to see their facilities. YIKES! That means that we'd have to battle an entire legion of veterinarians and won't win that battle. They're too "convinced" by these 3 big companies...especially, Hills!

Are they right about quality checks? They may be. However, like you've said, they still only give minimums and maximums in values/ingredients the same way any commercially produced product does. But, we go on believing in it all because we are caught with our pants down and our vets can use what little they know to swoop in and kind of bully us into buying their shelved stuff because we fear that if something goes wrong...we're responsible for not taking their advice and trust me...I've been told that by a couple of vets over their foods. In actual fact, it was the big food companies' foods that had CAUSED the problems in the first place.

Who do we believe nowadays about anything anymore? Everyone is out to make a buck if they can sell you something. No one is purely honest anymore as it means not adding that addition to their homes, or renovating or not being able to go on a vacation or buying a new car or whatever their needs/wants may be. The sad thing is, some people will sell out their own mothers if it meant that they'd get what they wanted from doing it. That's a sad statement to make about people but, there's so many of them out there that it's hard to tell who is being honest and who isn't. And, in today's world of technology, marketing and gimmicks...everyone has an angle that is hard to decipher which is true and which isn't. Everybody has a "study" going somewhere that proves their theory and a year later or many years later...all of THAT goes out a window with newer studies that disprove that theory and go onto another. One need only look at human studies where one year, coffee and wine are good for you so, everyone ran out and drank wine and Starbucks and Tim Hortons sprung up on every corner, while LCBO's (our liquor stores, regulated by the governments) all expanded into almost dept. store sizes. Now, they're saying, "oh yes...coffee is still good and wine is still good...but, only a small amount." Vitamin D...same thing....new experiments have shown that like everything else...moderation is key here and yet...it's higher than once thought so, everyone is running around, getting Vitamin D supplements. What's next? "we're wrong...there's toxins in the lab produced versions"? SIGH

 

[manxcat419]

Hills were certainly the pushiest with the vets in the UK. The only reason my 2 were switched to RC while we were still in the UK was because the vet at the practice who prescribed it just happened to like it better than she did the Hills. I can remember when one of my best friends there had the same problem with bladder stones and crystals with one of her cats that I'd had with Rosa (and only a few months later too). She fed the RC for a couple of months but then said she just couldn't afford it any more and switched her 2 cats to one of the cheaper supermarket brands. I used to go and feed her cats and sit with them for a couple of hours a day any time she was away from home and I can remember feeling sorry for them because my vet had brainwashed me into thinking that not feeding the prescription food would mean they'd have more problems later on. Funny how her cats have been fine since...not even a single UTI between the 2 of them, and yet Rosa's had 2 UTIs (though fortunately no more crystals), and more recently dental problems and then the diabetes!

And yes, I agree it isn't limited to cat food - not at all. It really is everything these days! I think the reason we get so upset about pet food is because our pets rely on us completely to buy the right food for them - we can at least read the studies for ourselves and decide how much of any of them to believe...our pets don't have that choice. So of course our vets get away with terrifying us into buying their "special" food and when things go wrong all we hear is "well x% of cats do end up with that condition no matter what they're fed" and other similar stories. It takes what is effectively a fairly large group case-study such as the one on this board where a lot of people use the standard non-prescription foods for us to be able to see what's really going on!

 

[Louellen]

Nicely put Manxcat! I figure that FEAR drives a lot of things in our lives and that's what gets preyed upon by almost everything and everyone. Like you've said, our pets have to count on us to do what is right for them. But, how do we know for sure? Ok, we have studies that we read and devour and discuss and then, we have our vets who will come at us with a different slant so, we figure..."ok, they went to vet school and I didn't". That leaves us scratching our heads in wonderment, wondering what the heck to do or think. In that case, it boils down to $$$s and how much we can reasonably afford without taking food off of our tables (though I could stand to have some food taken away ). And, so...we are on forums like this one, thinking, talking, researching and going with what we can come to grips with in terms of our own beliefs. Either way vet led path or our own research...if something goes wrong...we wonder if we did the right thing or not.

But, then again, we have to get into the over-vaccination route (@ BJM please join in here on this one ) and are we over-vaccinating our pets too? What about all of the flea and heart worm medications...another big dent in our wallets? But, are they being over-vaccinated? Are our vets just pawns by big pharma companies and they only know what they've been told as well...including the vet colleges who may also be fooled by the government because big pharma has swayed them with their "studies" where numbers have been possibly skewed??? It all sounds like giant conspiracy theories but, it may just be "lack of knowledge"??? Where does the buck stop being passed? I wish I knew. It drives me nuts.
Mind you, I don't have far to go to get to INSANE!

 

[manxcat419]

I agree Louellen - fear is used far too much as a motivator for people. Because, like it or not, it works! For our pets, our kids, ourselves - we all live in fear of being blamed for doing something that we thought was right at the time. And especially when it comes to dealing with someone who has medical training, like our vets, the fear of going against what they say if there's even the slightest chance that it might go wrong, is too great for us to go against their wishes a lot of the time.

I have to admit, the decision to choose a reasonably priced cat food for our cats was partly driven by economics. Having moved here from the UK at the end of 2013, and only finding my first work contract a month after Rosa's initial diagnosis (which pretty much wiped out the last of my savings in the first week), there was no way I could afford one of the expensive cat foods knowing that all 6 would end up eating it whether they needed it or not. Fortunately, because of the previous research that people had done here with their own cats, I was able to make that decision without feeling that I was giving the cats "second best". Though of course if something goes wrong later, I'll be right back to wondering if I made the right decisions along the way or not...I think that's human nature. All I can say with confidence at this point is that I did the best I could with the information that was available at the time!

As far as the vaccination debate is concerned, I will be honest and say that none of the cats I've owned have ever received regular vaccinations. Most of them had the first 2 shots as kittens and most were never vaccinated again after that point (one of them did get a couple of annual boosters as the vet pretty much had them into her at her annual check-up before I could say "no thanks"). My father studied biology at university and also does not do booster vaccinations for any of their pets, so I grew up believing that annual boosters are rarely necessary as none of our pets ever got sick from something they could have been vaccinated for. His theory, even years before any official studies showed it as probably true, was that there was no reason why the first set of vaccinations shouldn't confer long-term or even lifelong immunity. And that the vaccination immunity, together with the natural immunity that pets develop over the first year of their lives, should be sufficient. With Rosa and Regan, things were a bit different. They had their first shot as kittens, but before they could get the second shot in the kitten series, they both contracted calicivirus. The second shots had to be delayed and, during that time, my sister-in-law reminded me of the cat she'd owned who had also had calicivirus and who had a flare-up of the dormant virus EVERY time he got his booster. In the end, those flare-ups damaged his heart muscle and he ended up in heart failure and had to be PTS. So I took the decision that, because Rosa and Regan are indoor cats (unless directly supervised on our property) and were therefore at fairly low risk, I wouldn't re-do the kitten vaccination series with them let alone boosters. My vet didn't like it and asked me every year if I wouldn't reconsider...I re-explained why not every time and politely refused. They were rabies vaccinated before I moved to the USA because my vet assured me that it was required to bring them into the country (I found out later that it wasn't). But again, they only got a single shot (and I made sure it was into their leg, not their scruff because of the possible link to sarcoma) followed 3 weeks later by a titer to make sure the vaccine had worked. Would what I've done work for everyone? Probably not. But it was my decision to make and I made the decision I was comfortable with. All I can say is that to date, they've had no negative effects from not receiving vaccinations.

 

[Louellen]

Wow Manxcat...you've hit things squarely on the nose by saying that we can only do the best that we can with what we know at the time. That says it pretty nicely right there. Will we be wrong? Who knows right now? Even the vets and docs don't know...not really. We can only make the best decisions that we can make at that moment and hope for the best. That goes with our own lives, our kids, our pets and everything else in our lives.

We can get information...the most current to date that we can comprehend....the best opinions of the educated in these matters but, it all boils down to the fact that no one is a god and mistakes are going to be made by all of us in many things in this life. Hindsight, of course, is always 20/20 but, I think that making decisions has to be based upon our own tolerance levels (on many different fronts, including emotional as well as financial and time capabilities) as well as what we know. There's always something to learn and something new to discover but, how many of us have that kind of time and emotional/financial ability to look into every avenue in every area of life? None of us really. Even vets, for instance, may have a lot of knowledge about pet medical issues however, they don't know everything and lose their own pets as well. Mine just put 2 of is own pets to sleep more recently with cancers that in spite of his best efforts and all of his connections with colleagues in specialties, weren't able to "fix" for him. Both were fairly young. His cat was only 8 years old. His dog was 5. So...even there...even with the best of knowledge, he couldn't save his own pets...and, he TRIED! I'm sure we paid for part of those attempts as well. And, even though he has a lot of knowledge and access to some of the best opinions available, that's where his knowledge ends really. Ask him about his car and he's frustrated because he doesn't know how to do more than top up his windshield washer fluid. To figure that out, he paid to have a mechanic show him!

In looking back over the years of all of the 22 cats and dogs that I've had, I realize that no matter what we did or didn't do, the ones who lived the best and longest lives, seemed to be the ones who had the least pampering. They got medical care when needed but, no fancy foods or researched (heck there was only Dr. Ballards and Ole Roy for the dogs as canned foods and Gravy Train as kibble!) They got their rabies shots every year (pre- the 3 year shot availability) but, none of the multitudes of vaccines that we get our pets nowadays. That's not to say that it isn't helpful and we shouldn't get any of them...not by a longshot BUT...like your dad has said, I think that if we were to do a "titre" we'd find that our pets are pretty much still covered by one or two sets of shots. And, oddly enough...though it's a very loose and likely false connection, Morrigan checked out fine during her physical exam and blood tests in November of last year when she got her 2 sets of shots (rabies and the usual boosters). She didn't seem to feel well for a couple of days after those shots and we thought it was just the shot effects (like us with the flu shots sometimes) as well as the upset at having to go to the vet's. April, she was diagnosed with diabetes. Connection? Hmmm...maybe not but who knows for sure one way or another? I can't be told that it absolutely will not cause it but, I will hold judgement on it still as I don't know. (I'd love to take a poll on how many cats turned diabetic within months of having had their shots as a very un-scientific poll)

 

[manxcat419]

I couldn't agree more Louellen - while everyone has different limits, we do all have limits of what we can do. Not so much what we would do if we could, but none of us can do everything all of the time. I see how specialized knowledge can be on a daily basis here - Michael is really good with computers and coding because that's what he's trained to do. My training is all finance and numbers, so although I can use a computer more than adequately, ask me to build one or write a program to make it work and I'm lost. Likewise, the details of various investment types confuses him no matter how many times I explain it, because it's just not something he knows anything about. I will say we can both do standard maintenance on a car, but that comes from years of not having enough spare money to be able to pay someone else to do the basics...sometimes you learn because you have to and that's how I feel it is with feline diabetes. None of us WANTED to have to do all this research or give shots and test, we do it because it's the only way we can keep our precious pets with us for longer. We do it willingly, but always with the fear of getting something wrong at the back of our minds because we're not specialists - we've only got the training we've given ourselves and each other on this site.

And yes, we've had cats live into their mid-20s with maybe only 4 or 5 vet visits throughout their lives. And others who have their annual check-ups and for whom we follow all the vet advice about what we should feed, what we should do and how to prevent illnesses in the future who in the end need numerous vet visits for various conditions. I'd NEVER had a cat need a dental until Rosa - and every other cat I'd had before these two had been on "normal" cat food (whatever I could buy in the supermarket, nothing vet recommended at all, and often enough something different every week depending on what looked halfway decent and was on discount). The only reason these 2 ended up on Hills was because of the calicivirus - they were treated for that of course and the vet recommended they should have the best food I could give them their whole lives to prevent flare-ups and future problems. I KNOW if I asked him now, he'd probably tell me that all Rosa's problems in the last year or so are as a result of that infection when they were just 3 months old and nothing to do with the food. Are they? I don't know for sure but my feeling is that the problems are food related, not related to an illness they had 12 years ago. I don't think I can say it was the rabies vaccination that caused problems in her case as she'd had the 3 year shot about 2 1/2 years before her diagnosis. Which reminds me, I'm about to get into an argument with our vet this week about rabies boosters - apparently they STILL only offer the 1 year shot for some reason. Given that I was able to get the 3 year shot almost 3 years ago in the UK, there's no way I'm giving them boosters every year...I'm unhappy enough about having to give one every 3 years to be honest. I do understand that for rabies they do need to be vaccinated (of course the UK doesn't have rabies so it had never been an issue until I knew I was moving here) but I still want to keep the number of shots they receive over their lifetime to an absolute minimum. I'll gladly pay the extra for the 3 year shot but I'm still going to need them to be prepared to order it for me.